rusus and the
daughter-in-law of Tiberius, because she belonged to the family which
fortune had placed at the head of the immense empire of Rome, she would
not be able to persuade any one that she was innocent. The obscure
woman, without ancestry, who was accusing her from the grave, would be
taken at her word by every one; she would convince posterity and
history; against all reason she would prevail over the greatness of
Livilla! So Livilla took refuge in her mother's house and starved
herself to death, for she was unable to outlive an accusation which it
was impossible to refute.

Tiberius's reign continued for six years after this terrible tragedy,
but it was only a species of slow death-agony. The year 33 saw still
another tragic event--the suicide of Agrippina and her son Drusus. Of
the race of Germanicus there remained alive only one son, Caius (the
later Emperor Caligula), and three daughters, of whom the eldest,
Agrippina, the mother of Nero, had been married a few years before to
the descendant of one of the greatest houses of Rome, Cnaeus Domitius
Enobarbus. Tiberius still remained as the last relic of a bygone time
to represent ideas and aspirations which were henceforth lost causes,
amid the ruins and the tombs of his friends. Posterity, following in
the footsteps of Tacitus, has held him and his dark nature alone
responsible for this ruin. We ought to believe instead that he was a
man born to a loftier and more fortunate destiny, but that he had to
pay the penalty for the unique eminence to which fortune had exalted
him. Like the members of his family who had been driven into exile,
who had died before their time, who had been driven to suicide in
despair, he, too, was the victim of a tragic situation full of
insoluble contradictions; and precisely because he was destined to
live, he was perhaps the most unfortunate victim of them all.

[1] There was in the Roman legal system no public prosecutor and
virtually no police. Every Roman citizen was supposed to watch over
the laws and see that they were not infringed. On his retirement from
office, any governor or magistrate ran the risk of being impeached by
some young aspirant to political honors, and not infrequently oratory,
an art much cultivated by the Romans, triumphed over righteousness. In
the earlier period the ground on which charges were usually brought was
malversation; in the time of the empire they were also frequently
brought unde